In fiction, a popular trope is the psychic detective, a person with perceptions far beyond the human norm that uses his or her powers to solve crimes and help the innocent. For examples, check out The Dead Zone, Medium, or Tru Calling.
Now, I don’t personally believe in ESP, or that people can speak to the dead, or any other brand of psychic phenomena. And I’m not trying to open up a debate here for or against the existance of such powers, either. But what if they did exist?
What if a small number of people really did have those powers? Imagine that by (super)natural gift or through extreme dedicated practice, some people can read minds, communicate with the dead, and/or recieve visions of past or future events. How should the Justice System react to such people?
Would the dead be able to testify in court via mediums (a la Rashomon)?
Would psychic visions be admissiable?
Would you need a search warrant to bring a psychic to an area, looking for psychic impressions of what happened there?
Would psychic evidence be sufficient for a conviction?
How could we tell if a psychic was lying or mistaken (assuming they prooved their abilities in a previous, controlled situation)?
Could you compell someone to submit to a mind reading?
What if you were a law enforcement officer, and you were approached by a psychic. She privately proves her abilities to you, but doesn’t want to go public. Could you use information she gives you in the course of an investigation, without letting the public or the accused know you’ve got a psychic on staff?
You should start your research by reading The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. It covers exactly this case, and is about someone trying to commit a murder in such a society. It’s also a great book.
I’d say that evidence uncovered entirely through psychic means should not be used as a basis for conviction or even a search warrant. However, it could be used to identify avenues of investigation that would lead to uncovering other evidence that would be admissable, such as “The murder weapon is in a dumpster at fifth and main,” and the weapon has fingerprints/victims DNA/whatever on it, then that evidence could be used in court. I suppose they could even identify the perpetrator, allowing the police to focus their efforts on the guilty party, but still requiring them to build the case the old fashioned way.
Sure, why not. If it exists, and works reliably, it would be perfectly valid. What would be wrong with it? A psychic vision witness would be just the same as an eyewitness. They could be cross-examined in court over what they saw, and to establish the reliability of their visions.
Or the prosecution could employ a psychic to examine the evidence, and the defence can employ their own psychic with a different opinion. Treat it just the same as any other expert testimony.
If psychic powers existed the way they do in shows like Medium and The Dead Zone, I would consider them too unreliable to provide admissible evidence, because it appears that even the psychic himself/herself cannot always be certain whether a given vision is a true psychic vision or an ordinary dream/imagining/hallucination.
BTW – why does everybody assume genuine psychics primarily would want to solve crimes and things? I guess I would, but only for a change of pace, between my frequent trips to Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
One fictional example was the Babylon 5 series, in which psi powers were publicly known to exist but were inadmissable in court because no one could verify them except another psi.
On the show Medium, the district attorney uses Allison’s clues during investigations, but goes out of his way to retroactively find admissable probable cause to take to court. Similar to what happens on a show like Law & Order when they find certain proof of someone’s guilt but it’s inadmissable in court due to legal error. The cops and district attorneys use the knowledge to find a back door to proving guilt in court. Bear in mind that during an investigation, the police are allowed to suspect anything; they just can’t do illegal searches.
So as far as your first two questions go:
I would say NO, unless there was some acceptable way for non-psychics to verify the information.
For your third question:
, I’d say how could a defense attorney object to this, without admitting that the psychic can gain reliable information about the crime? Either psychic information is real or it isn’t.
Your next two questions:
I would suppose that unlike a physically present eyewitness (and even they get called liars), a psychic witness would have little way of proving that they were telling the truth. I’d say that psychic evidence would only be admissable if it pointed the way to verifiable proof. Like if someone said, “dig there and you’ll find a trunk with a dead body, stabbed with a knife with the accused’s fingerprints on it”. Rather than, “His wife didn’t drown when they were alone out on their boat, he threw her overboard”.
Finally:
That’s one for the SCOTUS. Depends on whether a person’s thoughts are privileged. In Babylon 5 for example, the Psi’s claimed that they could pick up what people were freely “broadcasting”, rather than scanning. Whether having a clairvoyant “vision” in someone’s presence is “mind reading” or not is yet another question.
The situation would be analagous to a witness that has emigrated and can’t or won’t come to court, but is willing to give testimony via telephone. Probably wouldn’t be admitted
Yes, like any other witness account.
follow the same rules as looking for any other type of evidence.
Maybe.
You can never be certain that a witness isn’t lying, or mistaken. You just have to make a judgement as to their reliability.
Under the same rules as submitting to a blood test, or similar.
Just tell your colleagues you have a hunch about a line of enquiry to follow.
And what kind of oath would you put them under? What penalty could you assess to a dead person that would be a meaningful deterrent to bearing false witness?
“Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” the bailiff asks.
“Sure, why not?” the zombie answers. “There isn’t one, take it from me, so it’s no skin off my nose. Well, it is skin off my nose, but… never mind.”
Pfft, it’s not like we’ve an answer to that question now with ordinary witnesses.
Already one can find examples of the justice system using such people, regardless if they are not effective, finding people that do have real powers would be then obvious because then they would be called constantly to help.
No.
Even though IANAL, I can say that once death was established for the “witness” there is no way they will allow that kind of testimony, a precedent will have to be found first.
They will have to show reliability in a court of law first
If the powers are real there should be no need to get there.
Once again, it will depend on the reliability of the psychic.
Aha, finally got to the real problem, the reality is that many times even the psychics can be mistaken. If it is indeed the human mind that sends the information to the psychics, one has to remember that human memory is very unreliable, then add another layer of unreliability (the memory of the psychic) and now you see the problem.
Looking at the way the powers melt in the presence of skeptics I would say no.
Once again, it depends on how reliable the psychic shows to be; after all, some cops can use a snitch, but his testimony is not used since the clue the snitch gave was enough to get to the evidence.
In shows like Medium and The Dead Zone, there is a lot of showmanship and frequent dramatical liberties. So much that I stopped watching them, they are just not realistic enough.
But the new show *Ghost Whispers * is right on so far. It is technically correct and enjoyable to watch. Might want to catch it sometime.
But how does a non-psychic determine teh reliability of a psychic? A non-scientist may have the principals of DNA fingerprinting explained to him, but a non-psychic will never be able to experience the world as a psychic does. It’s a completely alien way of percieving.
Is it enough to go by the pyschic’s track record? If he’s wrong even one, is he career then over?
Psychic evidence is interesting to me, because (if it existed), it’d be the perfect evidence. How better to know that Col. Mustard did it, when you get a vision of it whenever you walk into the library or touch the candlestick, and besides, Mr. Boddy will tell you himself who killed him. It seems too useful to disregard entirely, but how should it be regulated?
In that vein, what rights to I have regarding my psychic privacy? Do I have any expectation to keep secret things I could never hope to percieve myself?
And why shouldn’t the dead have their day in court? If we could prove that existance continues after death, then why douldn’t our rights?
You have asked so many questions it would take a book to answer them properly. So I will just try to answer them in abbreviated form.
Yes, really good psychics do exist, but they can’t see and hear everything going on around them in a spiritual sense. They would be overwhelmed with data. No, I would never convict anyone of anything on the say of a psychic alone. Generally psychics can lead the authorities to evidence and that evidence will prove the case. That is the preferred way to use psychics. There are many different ways psychics receive information, they don’t always “see” the crime repeated. But they do sometimes hear from the victims and provide new knowledge and evidence in that manner. If the victims remain on the earth plane (ghosts), the psychic can usually get information, but if they have gone into the light it is much more difficult and sometimes impossible because the victim doesn’t care about what happened in the physical any more.
In the spiritual world there is no privacy, everything is open to everyone, but usually one does not go around reading the thoughts of everyone else, it is considered rude.
I don’t believe anyone should be convicted on the say of a psychic. There are many obvious reasons for this. The psychic’s job is like a detective’s, they look for evidence to prove the case, only they have more insight than the average detective.
The legal effects are just this-the police would first start using psychic detectives to point them in the right direction, some psychics would get more business by reading body language and other various means of cold reading and tell police what they wanted to hear about certain suspects, some police would have “favorite” psychics that they could depend on to use as an excuse to go after people they otherwise couldn’t get evidence on, and either the courts would get sick and tired of this and ban the practice, or we would end up in a total police state where it would be your word against the official psychic’s word.
They’re not supposed to be realistic . . . no more than Roswell or Babylon 5 or The X-Files are supposed to be realistic . . .